Whether as a method, a medium, or as a way of mediating knowledge sound has the ability to transgress disciplinary boundaries, disrupt ways of knowing that have been overly reliant on sight, and transform the ways in which academia is practiced, both inside and outside the university. The study of sounds, application of sound-based methodologies and creation of sonic outputs is not only a fascinating, transdisciplinary and growing academic field, but one that can inform, and be informed by, the ways we teach, learn and create within the university setting. In its turn, CEU has the possibility to decisively contribute to developments in this new field.

Although universities remain the predominant formal means for the creation and intergenerational transfer of knowledge, they face immense challenges in terms of the storage, management and dissemination of knowledge, exacerbated by unequal access to resources, including networks. However, engendered by such challenges and concurrent technological advancements opportunities for co-construction, new forms of access and enhanced engagement have emerged. Students and faculty are able to establish together social realities and norms of participation through multiple (online) information sources, including a wide variety of devices and forms of media.

Sound Relations will harness sound’s transformative potential with a two-year-long series of interdisciplinary activities by faculty, students and researchers to 1) produce original research on sound’s ability to transgress, disrupt and transform; 2) to equip CEU students, researchers and faculty with the ability to use sound in their teaching, learning and research; and 3) to disseminate CEU’s exceptional research output via open access sonic media.

Taken together, these mutually informing activities will result in a number of concrete outputs, including:

CEU’s podcast library (an online, open and user friendly website)

A series of new exemplary podcasts that showcase the potential of the medium (e.g. oral testimonies & mass violence, hearing the other in diverse cities, PhD research experience, Radio Liberty, the trial of Imre Nagy)

Articles in leading journals (on the current state of academic podcasting, sound and urban change, reflexive practices in academic identity building)

The project will have transformative impacts across the university, including:

the foregrounding of sound as a method of inquiry, mode of reflection and extension of research agendas across departments (including Gender Studies, Sociology and Social Anthropology, and the School of Public Policy)